It’s Easter, and my kids are with their dad. Easter hasn’t been a holiday I’ve celebrated much since I was a child. Even when I went to church, it felt less central than on other days. When my children were little, though, we dyed Easter eggs with natural dyes—coffee grounds, tea leaves, onion skins, dried hibiscus flowers. They came out beautifully, if sometimes faint.
One year, we pressed dandelion leaves to the eggs and held them in place with pantyhose. When we removed them from the dye, peeled away the hose and the leaves, the imprint remained: white against color.
Looking back, I realize I never really taught my children the story of Jesus, not the way it was taught to me, through years of Bible and Sunday school. I told stories of his life, but not so much the crucifixion, and no detailed account of the resurrection. The stories I told were about how he lived, how he stood up for others. I presented him as a protester, a protector, a healer-- as a man who called out injustice and paid the price doled out by an unjust government. I did play the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar. We had tickets to see it at the Kimmel Center, but COVID shut it down before we went.
I understand there are many theological interpretations of Jesus, but I never felt peace with the idea of a father (divine or not) who required the death of his son for redemption. I didn’t want to teach my children that story. But a rebel who lived his convictions even when it led to death, who reached the fullness of his humanity, who became holy not through sacrifice but through love, courage, and truth—that’s the Jesus I could tell them about. And as I write this now, I wonder what this version of myself, ten years later, would tell those young people if they were little again.
Some theologians, such as Howard Thurman, Marcus Borg, and Richard Rohr, write about Jesus as holy not because he transcended his humanity, but because he embodied it. Thurman, in Jesus and the Disinherited, presents Jesus as a figure of radical empathy and spiritual resilience, deeply connected to the marginalized. Borg describes him as a “spirit person,” a wisdom teacher whose holiness came from compassion and presence. Rohr sees Jesus as someone who reached his full human potential, not to erase suffering, but to show how to walk through it. Rohr’s teachings and contemplative practices invite us to follow Jesus not as a distant deity, but as a model of love-in-action.
Their work helped me see holiness as something grounded in embodiment, in deep humanity, not as a divine transaction, but as a way of living. These were the ideas I was thinking about while I was mothering young children. I believe the values in those reflections shaped the stories I told them. But I never showed them the crucifix. They were never taken to a Passion Play where the image of a man nailed to wood was meant to teach them how to live or what love meant. I wanted them to know love as the act itself, not just its consequence in a world threatened by it.
Years ago, when we were driving, one of the children, maybe four at the time, pointed to a Catholic church and asked, “Why is that man up there on that piece of wood?” I looked up and saw Jesus on the cross. I realized then that I had never explained why churches place that image so prominently. I grew up with an empty wooden cross at the front of the church. The absence of a crucifix in most Presbyterian churches, and in many Protestant traditions more broadly, has deep theological and historical roots. As I understand it, the plain wooden cross symbolizes resurrection, simplicity, and ongoing faith—a living Christ who calls us to justice, love, and witness in the world, rather than a crucified Christ whose suffering is the center of devotion.
I visited with my children this past Friday when I dropped the dog at my ex-husband’s house. I sat on the floor of one of their rooms. I painted the room more than once. It was once a playroom, then an office, then a shared bedroom, and eventually one child’s room alone. It still holds a few toys from their early years. In the corner, a colorful storage basket from my parents holds toy swords—some of them bought in Germany when they were fascinated by knights. The stuffed penguin wedged behind the white radiator cover was from the Philadelphia Zoo, where we had a membership for years. I used to take them there on rainy days. Even then, I knew I would miss those days, even as they were filled with repetition and the strange intoxication of parenting little children. The rinse and repeat of snacks, strollers, water bottles, and extra clothes.
The house smelled the same. I don’t know what the smell is, exactly. It’s a smell I’ve never been sure I liked. One of my children recently said he always needs a few minutes to get used to the different smells of his two homes. Sitting in what used to be my home on Good Friday, I didn’t cry. I can be there now without losing my breath, without grief rising like a hand to my throat. That part of the grieving is really gone now.
But there’s a sadness, not for me, so much as for them. They’re the ones who carry the split. This house, that house. Those memories and the changing shape of family. I wonder what thread they use to weave it all together.
One of them once said I’d been “kicked out of the house.” That wasn’t what happened. I was grateful to have the chance to help him see it differently—to understand that I left because I wasn’t sure I’d stay in Philadelphia long term, while their dad probably would. I left because I couldn’t manage the mortgage and didn’t want to oversee the fourth-floor rental. I left because I thought it was best.
But to a child, it must have seemed unthinkable to leave and then to feel such grief unless you’d had no choice. I wonder what stories my children tell themselves now. Not just the ones they say out loud. The quiet ones. The ones that settle under their skin. The ones that shape their understanding of who we are and who they are becoming. Stories that will influence how they walk into adulthood, and how they compare their family to others.
This is where I find the sadness now—when I visit, when they come to me, and when they go back. It’s not about me anymore, not in the same way. It’s about the quiet, profound impact on them. The subtle way they are stitching together their lives in this context.
Sitting in this blue room in the house I no longer live in reminds me that even the fiercest love can’t protect others from pain. It can’t steer the path they will follow. I can be here, but I can’t make meaning out of it for them. That part isn’t mine. It never really was.
References
Borg, M. J. (1994). Meeting Jesus again for the first time: The historical Jesus and the heart of contemporary faith. HarperSanFrancisco.
Lloyd Webber, A., & Rice, T. (1970). Jesus Christ Superstar [Rock opera]. MCA Records.
Rohr, R. (2011). Falling upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life. Jossey-Bass.
Thurman, H. (1949). Jesus and the disinherited. Abingdon Press.